Blaming Cuba...For Everything!!

Still An American Obsession

         Of all the journalists and authors in America, Barbara Demick is one of the most honored. The Yale-educated Ms. Demick is the top foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and she served as the Beijing bureau chief in China from 2008 to 2014. She recently took her son on a visit to Cuba and then documented that trip with a book-length essay in one of America's highest profile and most respected magazines -- The New Yorker. The Jan. 10th-2016 essay was entitled "Shopping In Cuba." It seems the sophisticated Ms. Demick expected her shopping experience in Cuba to resemble a routine visit to one of America's most modern malls. Well, it wasn't quite like that and Ms. Demick equated it to...North Korea.

         And speaking of North Korea, Barbara Demick's award-winning 2010 book was entitled: "NOTHING TO ENVY: Real Lives in North Korea." So, she knows North Korea. After her trip to Cuba, Ms. Demick wrote in her high-profile Jan. 10-2016 article in The New Yorker these exact words: "But Cuba also looks to me like a North Korea with Palm Trees. To be sure, Cuba has evolved politically, investing in education and health care rather than weapons of mass destruction." Ummmmm...? Ms. Demick's grudging compliment to Cuba regarding its educational and health priorities seemed to be an obligatory back-handed admission.

      The rest of Barbara Demick's essay about her trip to Cuba seemed intent on demeaning the island by comparing it to North Korea and apparently trying to differentiate today's island from the halcyon days of the 1950s when the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship had nice shopping areas -- at least for the very rich if not for everyday Cubans. In this week's essay in The New Yorker, Ms. Demick wrote: "The problem might be that I spent half of my trip in Trinidad, a cobblestoned colonial city on the Caribbean coast." She detested Trinidad, writing about, "My inability to obtain ice cream for my son. When we finally found it, on the menu of an expatriate beach club in Havana, it arrived melted. And the waitress couldn't find a spoon." Ummmm....? Obviously, Ms. Demick is accustomed to finding perfect ice cream, along with handy spoons, when she shops at America's modern malls. BUT NOT IN TRINIDAD, the quint little city on Cuba's south-central "Caribbean coast."

This map shows the location of Trinidad in south-central Cuba.

        I have been to the cobble-stoned colonial city of Trinidad, Cuba. It clings very proudly to its splendid, colorful traditions. I have mentioned several times in these Cubaninsider essays that Trinidad was my favorite Cuban city because of the friendliness of its citizens as well as its nice, unique architecture.

            I distinctly remember that, when I visited Trinidad, I had some delicious ice cream and even got to eat it with an appropriate spoon. If, on the other hand, I found some things not as elite or convenient as in the United States, I never complained about it either in Cuba or when I returned to Wyoming, USA.

       This is the beach that adorns Trinidad. Tourists have often rated Varadero Beach in Cuba as "One of the world's most beautiful beaches." I have also eaten ice cream at an outdoor table at Varadero Beach and I don't dispute its world-class rating. {On that above map you can see that Varadero is in northeastern Cuba just an hour's drive along the coastal highway from Havana}. Yet, I still consider Trinidad even more beautiful than Varadero but I didn't visit either Cuban city with the predisposed idea of demeaning them.

       Which brings me back around to Barbara Demick's high-profile excoriation of Cuba, especially Trinidad, in this week's The New Yorker magazine. Her essay included the New York Times photo depicted above, with the caption reading: "In the markets and shops of Cuba are an ample supply {of things} but certain mundane provisions are not." Ummmmm...? One such "mundane" thing missing in Cuba, according to Ms. Demick, was good ice cream...and a handy spoon to eat it. Going to such mundane lengths to blame Revolutionary Cuba would be alright, I reckon, if such essays from high-profile American journalists-authors were fair and balanced, which they seldom are. While Revolutionary Cuba can justifiably be blamed for a lot of things, including perhaps the abundance of overly ripe bananas in this photo, when it comes to Cuba, there is a lot of blame to go around from America's standpoint as opposed to just blaming Revolutionary Cuba. But most U. S. journalists prefer just one side of a two-sided story.

        Perhaps, for example, the U. S. should be blamed for its unconscionable support of the thieving, murderous Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba beginning in 1952, which spawned a notable revolution.

       Perhaps, for example, the United States should be blamed for supporting the Batista-Mafia dictatorship instead of supporting Cuban mothers like these who were the prime victims of Batista's sheer brutality.

        Perhaps, for example, the U. S. should be blamed for not helping or even acknowledging the extreme poverty rampant in Cuba during the Batista-Mafia reign, facts readily reported by the New York Times.

        Perhaps, for example, the U. S. should be blamed for Mafia thugs like Meyer Lansky looting satchel-full loads of money, as reported by Life Magazine, while most Cubans were mired in abject poverty and many Cuban mothers were marching in the streets to protest the murders of their children to quell dissent.

          Or, perhaps, the U. S. should be blamed for necessitating a revolution that would, and did, respond to the extreme excesses of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship with the revolution that triumphed in 1959.

         Or, perhaps, the U. S. should be blamed for American Burt Glinn being in Cuba in January of 1959 photographing Fidel Castro's triumphal arrival in Havana while, perhaps, Burt Glinn could have been photographing much calmer scenes in the U. S.

                Or, perhaps, the U. S. should be blamed for the ill-conceived CIA-Cuban exile attack at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in April of 1961, which failed to recapture Cuba but only served to strengthen its resolve.

      Or, perhaps, the U. S. should be blamed for devising and executing the stupidly conceived invasion at the Bay of Pigs that only served to greatly enhance the already legendary reputation of Fidel Castro, who still wears the Bay of Pigs banner at age 89.

       Or, perhaps, the U. S. should be blamed for montages like this on display today in Cuba and the Caribbean honoring the 73 victims of Cubana Flight 455, the civilian airplane bombed out of the sky on October 6, 1976, by very well-known terrorists.

This graphic is courtesy of: Carlos Latuff.

        Or, perhaps, the U. S. should be blamed for imposing on Cuba, since 1962, the longest and cruelest embargo in history, one strongly opposed, as yearly demonstrated in a UN vote, by America's very best friends all around the world.

Which brings me back to Barbara Demick:

   I fully recognize that Barbara Demick is one of America's greatest journalists and authors. She has won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism and a National Book Award as an author. Yet, I would like to make this suggestion in the form of a blogger's letter: "Ms. Demick, your long, high-profile essay in The New Yorker on Jan.10-2016 unfairly demonized the island of Cuba while sanctimoniously sanitizing America's share of the blame for problems in Cuba. When I visited Cuba, I ate delicious ice cream with a spoon in Trinidad, Havana, and Varadero. I accept the fact that, on your visit, you had trouble finding good ice cream, or even a good spoon, in Trinidad and Havana. But is that a reason for excoriating Cuba? Other than reluctantly admitting that Cuba prioritizes heath and education for its citizens, could you not have discovered some other everyday positive element on the island during your visit? Or was your mind predisposed to search out just the negatives, such as the lack of good ice cream? And if so, is that not typical of American journalists, when the topic is Cuba, reporting only one side of two-sided stories?"

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U.S.-Cuba In The New Year

Advances vs. Roadblocks
{Sunday, January 10th, 2016}

      Marselha Goncalves Margerin has devoted her life to human rights, especially for women and children. A graduate of American University in Washington, her first job was with the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. Then she worked for the United Nations, especially earning plaudits for yeoman efforts in Haiti. Since August of 2014, Marselha has been Amnesty International's Advocacy for the Americas. On Jan. 7-2016 the Associated Press had a major article on human rights in Cuba written by the AP's Havana correspondents Andrea Rodriguez and Michael Weissenstein. Regarding Cuba's treatment of dissidents, Marselha was quoted with this succinct, one-sentence reply: "The reforms that have to be made in terms of restrictions of liberty must come from the Cuban government, not from the government of the United States." It was a very simple and forthright reply, but one that very few knowledgeable and informed Americans have the courage to make. Instead, proselytized or politically correct Americans routinely answer or suggest that the United States, not Cuba, should mandate and judge human rights in Cuba. The Rodriguez-Weissenstein AP article that quoted Marselha also stated: "Cuba's dissidents are viewed with skepticism by many ordinary Cubans who question their backing and motivation." NO KIDDING!! Most Americans who actually live or work in Cuba, including journalists, are surprised at the relatively small number of dissidents despite all the well-funded U. S. regime-change programs. YET, as the AP article in January of 2016 indicated, many skeptical "ordinary" Cubans "question their backing and motivation." In other words, the plethora of tax-funded regime-change programs routinely and lavishly funded by the U. S. Congress backfire time-and-again in Cuba, repeatedly making the pugnacious island more determined than ever to be a sovereign nation. Even hints of U. S. support or financing of dissidence in Cuba boosts the revolutionary government and leaves the normal influence of the U. S. government a non-factor. Americans for decades have been propagandized to base their opinions of Cuba on what Miami extremists or other biased politicians, journalists or bloggers tell them. But the aforementioned AP update from Havana reveals why Americans would be smarter to depend on what unbiased experts say. Regarding changes in Cuba, Amnesty International's rational is correct:

                "The reforms that have to be made in terms of restrictions of liberty must come from the Cuban government, not from the government of the United States."

        Andrea Schneider is a Law Professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee. She and two other law professors at Marquette are taking 25 of their students to Cuba for a week. Ms. Schneider told WISN 12 News in Milwaukee, "I think it's a real opportunity for students to learn about the people we've kind of seen as the other for so long in U. S. diplomatic relations." Ms. Schneider is among a fast-growing segment of Americans anxious to take advantage of President Obama's historic overtures to Cuba, slicing into six decades in which Americans, even in the world's greatest democracy, have been dictated to on the topic of Cuba. One of those dictates not only dissuaded Americans from traveling to Cuba to judge it for themselves but actual U. S. laws SINCE 1962 have long prevented everyday Americans from visiting one place on this planet -- Cuba. This helps Cuban-exile extremists to more easily proselytize Americans regarding their points of view about the nearby island. Andrea Schneider, and others...thanks to President Barack Obama...prefer having the freedom to judge Cuba first-hand as opposed to being at the mercy of having force-fed, biased opinions rammed down their throats.

      Sarah Stephens is the democracy-loving chieftain of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas. Because she is a democracy-lover who happens to know more about U.S.-Cuban relations than anybody else, don't expect to see her on American television "news" programs discussing U.S.-Cuban relations. That's left up to anti-Cuban zealots like pundit Ana Navarro and the two Cuban-American presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Yet, when it comes to Cuba, she has had far more influence on President Obama than all those pundits and Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Congress combined. Each week on the Center for Democracy in the Americas website, Ms. Stephens posts a "Cuba Central" summary that is the best update, each and every week, on U.S.-Cuban relations. Her insightful article this second week of January is entitled: "Cuba and the U. S. -- The State of the Reunion." She wrote:
               "During the first days of the New Year, we got to see first-hand the benefits of the Obama policy when we joined a trade delegation led by Virginia's Governor Terry McAuliffe -- a visit that produced cooperation agreements between the Cuban and Virginia Port Authorities, and between Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Havana. McAuliffe, who delighted onlookers by driving a 1956 pink Chevrolet Bel Air named Lola around Havana, concluded his visit to Cuba by previewing an appeal he promised to make to Paul Ryan, the House Speaker; Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader; and the members of the House and Senate across the political aisle." Ms. Stephens said that Governor McAuliffe told Congressional leaders Ryan and McConnell: "2016 needs to be the year that we move our relationship forward, that we end the embargo and we do the right thing for the citizens of the United Sates of America and the citizens of Cuba." 

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe at Cuba's Mariel Port.

Governor McAuliffe making his case for improved U.S.-Cuban relations.

       But Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan -- the two leaders of the 535-member, Republican-controlled U. S. Congress -- tend only to merely grin and smirk when people like Governor McAuliffe plead for sanity and decency to prevail in America's Cuban policy. McConnell and Ryan only take their Cuban orders from self-serving benefactors of a failed policy that has existed since the 1950s. And that simply won't change.

       Which brings us back around to Sarah Stephens, the democracy-loving American who heads the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas. In her January 9th CDA website update, she wrote: "What's exciting to us is that the administration continues moving forward on efforts to broaden and deepen the reforms. REUTERS broke an exclusive story this afternoon saying the U. S. government is finally considering putting an end to the program that lures Cuban doctors and nurses off their foreign postings with promises of easy entry into the United States. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and more than a dozen colleagues urged the administration to cancel the program, especially after lauding what Cuba had done to fight the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa." Ms. Stephens added that the U. S. effort to induce Cuban doctors to defect to the U. S. was "conceived under President George W. Bush as a brain-drain effort" and was not "consistent with Obama's new, long overdue direction."

       Rep. Rosa DeLauro, praised by Sarah Stephens for trying to end the "brain drain" of Cuban doctors, is emblematic of Americans tired of America's Cuban policy that, for decades, has been dictated by extreme elements from the ousted Batista dictatorship in Cuba aligned with self-serving acolytes such as the Bush dynasty. Most Americans, Cuban-Americans, and citizens of the world agree with Congresswoman DeLauro but, when it comes to Cuba, the U. S. democracy rarely considers the majority. YET, that doesn't mean that democracy-lovers like Rosa DeLauro...and Sarah Stephens...will give up trying to make things right.

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Miami's Cuban Politics

Democracy, Revenge, & Capitalism
{Updated: Saturday, January 9th, 2016}

         Patrick Oppman, CNN's Havana correspondent, has been reporting all week about a new deal frantically signed by Mexico and five other Latin American nations to finally use airplanes and buses to transport over 8,000 Cubans to the Mexico border. Once there, when their front toe touches U. S. soil, they instantly become, quite unlike all non-Cubans, legal residences of the U. S. complete with instant welfare. Since 1966, of course, this extremely discriminatory practice has been a "legal" law designed to entice Cubans, and only Cubans, to the U. S. for the purpose of hurting Castro, not so unlike the terrorist bombing of the civilian Cubana Flight 455 that was heralded in the Miami media as the "biggest blow yet against Castro."

     Wet Foot/Dry Foot, enacted into law by the U. S. Congress in 1966, has much in common with Cubana Flight 455, although Wet Foot/Dry Foot is very legal and the terrorist bombing of the civilian airplane was not. Both, however, have been largely condoned by a huge segment of the intimidated or unconcerned American people. The demise of Cubana Flight 455 took place Oct. 6-1976 and, from that day till this day, Americans have been persuaded not to express an opinion about it. The same thing has happened to Wet Foot/Dry Foot since 1966 although non-American democracy-lovers in the Caribbean, Latin America and the world believe that it is -- like many U. S. laws designed to hurt Castro while also enriching and empowering Cuban migrants -- grossly discriminating against all non-Cubans, meaning such laws are unbecoming for the world's most famed democracy. That's why CNN's ongoing coverage of the months-long debacle in Costa Rica is so very important.  

         CNN's Patrick Oppmann this week has detailed how over 8,000 Cubans have been blocked in Costa Rica for many weeks because a lot of Latin American nations are not too pleased with America's Cuban laws that they feel discriminate against their citizens who would be detained and deported if they touched U. S. soil. Costa Rica as well as other nations such as Panama and Nicaragua are tired of putting up with thousands of Cubans, stranded or otherwise, heading to the U.S.-Mexican border, some of whom have reportedly paid as much as $15,000 apiece to human traffickers who claim, falsely, that President Obama is capable of ending Wet Foot/Dry Foot, which only Congress could do, as those human traffickers gleefully well know. Frantically, as Patrick Oppman reports on CNN, Costa Rica, Mexico, and other outraged countries have reached agreement to start flying and busing the stalled Cubans to the U.S.-Mexican border on January 12th. The whole mess centered in Costa Rica highlights the sheer insanity of the world's greatest democracy allowing, decade after decade, a handful of self-serving zealots to easily use the U. S. Congress to legalize laws that favor one group of people while alarmingly discriminating against all others.

Meanwhile:

Photo courtesy: The Miami Herald.

         The Miami Herald this week had a major article entitled: "Miami-Dade Pursuing Ferry Service To Cuba From Port-Miami." In fact, there are numerous commercial enterprises in the state of Florida, including Miami, and other cities and farms across America that long to do business with Cuba now that a bold and brave President, Mr. Obama, has opened some doors that had been closed since 1959. Ports from New Orleans to Miami to Virginia, as emphasized this week when Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe visited the Port of Mariel, have long competed to be at the forefront of doing business with Cuba when, or if, the embargo is ever lifted. Yet, with a stranglehold on Congress, a few extremists can easily prevent that, even though many experts believe that -- in capitalist America -- the vast plethora of American businesses, large and small, that desire opportunities to conduct commerce with Cuba will finally, one day, prevail. Sadly, that's not the way Congress operates.

     Carlos Gimenez is a smart and powerful man. He seems to believe that President Obama's commendable efforts to normalize relations with Cuba will help the vast majority of Cubans, Cuban-Americans, and all Americans...as well as enormously boost the worldwide image of the U. S. and its democracy. Carlos Gimenez was born on January 17th, 1954 in Havana. After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution over the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship on January 1, 1959, the parents of Carlos Gimenez migrated to the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami, Florida. Carlos Gimenez since 2011 has been the Mayor of Miami. He was preceded as Miami's Mayor by like-minded anti-Castro zealots Carlos Alvarez and Alex Penelas. But more and more, Cuban-Americans like Carlos Gimenez disagree with the hard-line Miami members of the U. S. Congress who insist on maintaining and even strengthening anti-Castro laws that, coincidentally, enrich and empower Cuban-Americans and also provide powerful financial and residential incentives for Cubans on the island to defect to the USA.

   Carlos Gimenez, as the Cuban-born Mayor of Miami, seems to believe it is finally time to get past the Cold War treatment of a fast-changing Cuba. He understands that crafting U. S. laws to hurt the soon-to-be 90-year-old Fidel Castro, while enriching and empowering Cuban migrants, exiles and selected Cuban-Americans, has become somewhat counter-intuitive to the goals and ideals of most Americans, including moderate Cubans in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood.

     Meanwhile, as the New Year of 2016 sits atop the Old Year of 2015, four Cuban-American members of the U. S. Congress from Miami and one from New Jersey can easily dictate America's complex and layered Cuban laws...in a legislative body that has 535 mostly helpless and muted members. That's why the 1966 Wet Foot/Dry Foot law, in this first month of 2016, is roiling a host of Latin American countries that are trying desperately to do something about more than 8,000 Cubans stranded in Costa Rico on their way to seeking special privileges once they touch U. S. soil at the Mexican border. When that problem is finally resolved, many more will surely follow in 2016 and beyond. All the while, just as they were not supposed to react to Cubana Flight 455 and its lingering aftermath, Americans will be expected not to offer opinions on such tangible and visible things as Wet Foot/Dry Foot, the democracy-sapping U. S. embargo of Cuba, and other dreadful aspects of America's Cuban policy that would be fixable if this generation of Americans was just a tiny bit more courageous.

Cubana Flight 455-- Oct. 6, 1976.

9,000+ Cubans stranded in Costa Rica & Panama -- January, 2016.

        Perhaps the U. S. Congress should apologize to Costa Rica, Panama, and all the other countries harmed by a Cuban policy it so steadfastly clings to, not to mention an apology to the survivors of the 73 people that were aboard Cubana Flight 455.

      Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Illinois, has been entrenched in the U. S. Congress since 1993. Yesterday -- Jan. 7th, 2016 -- he was furious at fellow Democrat, President Obama, for deporting non-Cubans. The Associated Press in articles today says that Mr. Gutierrez said, among other things, "In the Hispanic caucus, there is a real sense of outrage!" Puerto Rico, for example, is a U. S. Territory and its citizens can vote and are represented in Congress. But recent reports say A THOUSAND Puerto Ricans A WEEK are arriving permanently in Miami and New York to join millions of other Puerto Ricans in the U. S. because of the poverty and crime on their Caribbean island. As U. S. citizens they can't be deported but other non-Cubans can and readily are, according to Congressman Guiterrez, who was born in Chicago and is of Puerto Rican descent. So, favoring Cubans upsets everyone...EXCEPT CUBANS!!

       Every day of every year thousands of migrants risk their lives to get to the U. S., especially from poverty-stricken, crime-infested countries like Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. But they are all, including children, subject to being arrested and deported. All except Cubans, that is. Cubans are home-free merely by touching U. S. soil.

       This photo shows why many Cuban hotels are sold out for the entire year of 2016. It was raining in Havana yesterday when a German plane carrying Deputy Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabrile arrived with a 60-member delegation mostly made up German business executives. That's Mr. Gabriel in the center in the black coat. He announced that he and his entourage want to "create an economic opening on the island as Cuba's economy embraces major changes. Germany can invest and should be a participant in Cuba's economic revival. Bilateral trade and commerce between Germany and Cuba is a natural. Germany should be Cuba's major trade partner in Europe." Germany is Europe's richest country. It now trails France and Spain as Cuba's major trading partners in Europe.

And a Cuban very-hard-to-believe-but-true story:

       This photo shows a U. S. military helicopter firing two highly sophisticated, laser-guided Hellfire missiles. Today the U. S. government is frantic because one of its Hellfire missiles is missing and -- IN CUBA!! I kid you not!! The Hellfire missile was shipped from Orlando to Spain and then was, for some reason, being shipped back to the U. S. via France. But an Air France transport plane, on a regular flight to Cuba, dropped it off at Jose Marti International Airport in Havana. The United States badly wants it back because of fears it could be broken down and its secrets given to Russia, China, Iran, or some other military competitor. Cuba, meanwhile, apparently has no ill intentions with its unexpected Hellfire missile but, understandably, the Cuban government is wondering if its arrival in Cuba was just a stupid mistake or...something more devious. As I said, I kid you not BUT SOMETIMES I WISH I WERE.

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A Great Man Cries

And With Good Reason
{Updated for: Thursday, January 7th, 2016}

         America's Barack Obama has now started the final year of his two-term, 8-year presidency. This week -- Monday, January 5th, 2016 -- the whole wide world watched as the President of the United States unashamedly cried. And millions of democracy-lovers worldwide cried with him. The salient tears were for...the United States. An exceedingly smart and decent man, Mr. Obama -- the leader of the world's richest and strongest nation -- had ample reason to cry as the rest of the world watched. During his presidency, Mr. Obama has tried desperately to help the 300 million Americans not among the rich elite. And he has done as much as he can, such as: {1} Obamacare, a plan to help provide health care for those who can't afford it; {2} Iran, a plan to try to prevent a Middle Eastern power from getting nuclear weapons because it would exacerbate a part of the world that is already a tender-box largely due to the mistakes he inherited from the two-term George W. Bush presidency; {3} Cuba, a shameful U. S. policy that, perhaps more than any other issue, has mocked the U. S. image worldwide for well over half a century; {4+}, etc.

           During a tumultuous seven years as President, Mr. Obama -- a brave and deeply concerned man -- has cried many times as America's "Consoler-in-Chief." Time and again many Americans have cried with him as scores of innocent people -- such as the two-dozen little kids at Sandy Hook Elementary School -- were gun-downed in a gun-crazed society that arms vicious criminals and the mentally ill. And yet, his sane efforts to do something about it have consistently been met and thwarted by sheer right-wing insanity.

       Jonah Goldberg, the antithesis to President Obama, was born 46 years ago in Manhattan, one of the five boroughs of New York City. Within the bowels of the world's strongest democracy, he has never been a candidate for public office. Yet, on issues such as gun control, the environment, health care and educational opportunities for the non-affluent, Cuba, etc., Mr. Goldberg and his ilk often have more power than a two-term President. Mr. Goldberg is a lobbyist in a lobbyist-dictated U. S. government. He is an American Enterprise Institute fellow and National Review contributing editor. He is also a prime Editorial propagandist as a member of USA Today's Board of Contributors. As such, this week -- the day the President cried in front of the whole world -- Mr. Goldberg used almost a whole page in America's biggest newspaper to excoriate a great man, President Obama. One paragraph of Goldberg's scathing January 5th article was: "Obama doesn't really care. He sees his job as doing the things he wants to do and being the sort of president his biggest fans want him to be. That why over the holidays, he reportedly ordered his lawyers to 'scrub' the laws to find ways so he can take new unilateral action against gun ownership."

      Highly funded and normally unchallenged right-wing organizations in the U. S. with patriotic-sounding titles  -- such as The Heritage Foundation, Jonah Goldberg's American Enterprise Institute, The Tea Party, The National Rifle Association, etc. -- have not only infiltrated the pillars of the U. S. government but they have largely usurped both it and the Republican Party, which is one-half of the U. S. two-party system.

       And then, using a readily available and huge segment of the U. S. media, lobbyist such as Mr. Goldberg can endlessly preach to the choir, which unfortunately is now large enough to predicate who gets elected to the dysfunctional, largely bought-and-paid-for but ultra-powerful U. S. Congress, which "functions" despite having a national approval rating in the single digits. That's because the 535-member Congress can have a Tea Party zealot from South Carolina who alone can dictate abominations to the whole country on things such as gun control, or a Cuban-American zealot from Miami {whose father was a key Minister in the overthrown Batista dictatorship back in the 1950s} who can now dictate Cuban policy by such things as "slipping" anti-Cuban legislation into a multi-billion-dollar "must-paid" bill that is veto-proof and thus beyond the scope of a decent President's veto. In such a milieu, that decent President is also stymied when he tries to protect 5-years-olds at Sandy Hook Elementary School from a gun-crazed society.

        Yes, this week -- January 5th, 2016 -- a great, twice-elected President of the United States cried unabashedly as the whole wide world watched. You would cry too, I believe, if you were prevented from possibly saving 20+ children at an elementary school from being gunned down by a crazed gunman who had no problem getting access to an arsenal of military-type weapons. Mr. Obama, like America's great Founding Fathers, envisioned an ethereal America that would do all it possibly could to protect the most innocent and the most vulnerable among us -- such as those 5-year-old girls and boys at Sandy Hook Elementary School. What they didn't envision were loopholes in the U. S. Congress and a government at the mercy of self-serving and well-funded lobbyists. Therefore, Mr. Obama's tears yesterday were well-deserved and well-earned. His epic quest to avoid a post-apocalyptic United States will likely succumb to darker forces. Yes, I cried yesterday along with my President and those parents from Sandy Hook who, as shown above, bravely stood beside America's two-term President, Mr. Obama. An America that supports those parents, Mr. Obama, and the exalted office he holds, is the America that we and the entire world so badly needs. Money-crazed lobbyists overrunning Washington is the last thing America and the world needs.

Anyway, that's my sincere opinion.
Meanwhile:

Photo courtesy of: Desmond Boylan/Associated Press.

     The above photo shows the Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, stopping off at Cuba's refurbished, state-of-the-art, deep-water Port of Mariel on his three-day visit to the island this week. At the above microphone, Mr. McAuliffe made a long extemporaneous speech. While praising the reception his 30-member entourage received in Cuba, he repeated what he has being saying for years: "I always thought the embargo was a silly policy." But, of course, a silly policy that, since 1962, has continued to hurt Cuba and demean America. Among other things, while in Cuba this week, Governor McAuliffe signed an agreement that hopefully will greatly expand trade between the mammoth Port of Virginia in Norfolk and the Port of Mariel, 28 miles southwest of Havana and 100 miles directly south of Key West, Florida. 

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